Liar & Spy by Rebecca Stead - review

Friday 9 November 2012 17.55 EST
First published on Friday 9 November 2012 17.55 EST

The title on the cover of Rebecca Stead's latest book is made up of Scrabble letters, along with a conveniently created "&" tile, which is highly appropriate because this is a book about the games we play and the different rules we choose to play them by.

There are the messages Georges leaves his mother in Scrabble tiles last thing at night, and the messages she leaves him to find in the morning. (She works night shifts at the hospital.) But is she really leaving those messages, or is someone else? Or can it somehow be both her and not her? What game is being played here?

Words are themselves a form of game. You have to follow the rules to make sense of them. Georges's school friend Bob English is following a less well-trodden path, giving the famous example of how "ghoti" spells "fish" (with the f sound of the gh from "enough", the i sound of the o from "women", and the sh sound of ti from "nation").

He also claims to champion spelling reform. "I spell it like it sounds," he tells Georges, having just written the word dumb without the "b". "Ask yourself: does the 'b' serve a purpose? Why is it even there?" And Georges's reaction? "But what I'm thinking is that dum just looks – kind of dumb."

And, on the subject of dumb, Georges is being verbally bullied at school but chooses to ignore it, never rising to the bait. "It's just dumb stuff. You know, kids being kids. I know none of it will matter in a few years," he finally tells his father. "Mom ... always says look at the big picture. How all the little things don't matter in the long run." "But they matter now, Georges," says his father. More games to play to try to deal with daily life. More of Seurat's little dots.

Georges's father has lost his job as an architect and they've had to downsize from a house to an apartment in the same neighbourhood. It is in the apartment block that Georges meets siblings Safer, Candy and Pigeon. Their parents play by different rules: supposedly letting the children name themselves when they were old enough. Candy is a sweet-loving girl and her elder brother, Pigeon, loved birds. But what of Safer? He seems to spend most of his time watching a feral parrots' nest on the building opposite, or watching the lobby – for the mysterious Mr X – through the camera in the door entryphone system.

He enlists Georges into his spy club. But in life, as in games, things are rarely as they purport to be. And, as well as the lies we tell other people in order to get by, there are the lies we tell ourselves.

Liar & Spy is very short, very American and very enjoyable. It's also very funny in places, such as the extraordinarily personal fortunes in the fortune cookies at Yum Li's. ("Why don't you look up once in a while? Is something wrong with your neck?") Rebecca Stead makes writing this well look easy. She is, of course, playing games.

• Philip Ardagh's The Grunts in Trouble, illustrated by Axel Scheffler, is published by Nosy Crow.